Peter (Jacob W. Gentry) is a guy with some serious problems. He and his friend are involved in some shady dealings. He’s addicted to cocaine, somebody is watching his every move, and his boss has just ordered a hit on him.
The hit arrives in the form of Ashley (Kym Jackson), a noir-specific blonde who watches Peter with predatory eyes. She’s either going to kill him or kiss him. We’re hinted that there were a number of objectives and plans in place at the beginning of this film, and through a confidently fractured narrative we learn right away that none of them seemed to go as planned. Peter is grabbed in a subway platform, thrown into a dark room, and interrogated about the fate of Ashley.
What happened to her? Why is Peter still alive? He answers only that he loved her.
Film Noir is a genre that has all but vanished in Hollywood today, and that is a shame. The deep shadows, icy blondes, flawed heroes, and colorful villains that inhabit the uncaring, indifferent universe of noir have been largely traded for high gloss moral safety in today’s marketplace. It was nice to see a movie that immediately immersed itself in the syrupy darkness of noir while managing to feel contemporary at the same time.
Noir thrives on the MacGuffin, a term that Alfred Hitchcock invented for a plot device that frankly doesn’t matter. It can be anything – a file, a suitcase, the oft-used “data” – as long as it drives the characters and the plot forward. “Kiss from Calcutta” is a barrage of MacGuffins. Who Peter works for, what his responsibilities are, what he and his friend have uncovered, why their deaths would be necessary, who Ashley works for, and who she’ll eventually betray are left entirely unanswered.
In theory this is smart for a short – we need to get invested in the characters, not the mechanics. But unfortunately, that’s the biggest hurdle the film can’t quite clear – we need to be invested in the characters, not the mechanics.
The problem starts with the character of Peter. The film clearly sets up the fact that he is our hero, but there is little to like about him. His cocaine habit distances him from the audience, and his friendship to Chester (a tangential character dispatched early by Ashley) is summed up in a monologue that simply paints Peter as a horny teenager. While the flawed antihero is a noir staple, the protagonist often has a moral weakness – either by code or conduct – that allows us to sympathize with them and care about their fate. In Peter’s case, we don’t ever quite get there.
This might be partially due to the casting of writer Jacob W. Gentry. Gentry is not an actor – the filmmakers did not have time to cast the lead. For a non-actor, his work in the film is nothing short of commendable. He commits to the role and rises to the occasion as best he can, and the filmmakers have lucked out to roll the dice on a non-actor and have it come off so well. However, one has to wonder how it would have played out if the lead performance was as nuanced as Kym Jackson, who is then forced to carry the emotional core of the movie as Ashley.
